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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380273">ex averno</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NegativeGravity/pseuds/NegativeGravity'>NegativeGravity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Trinity Blood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Author Assumes Familiarity With Greek Mythology So YMMV, Character Study, Gen, Minor Biblical Allusions, Rated G for Grossly Self-Indulgent</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 08:29:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>675</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26380273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NegativeGravity/pseuds/NegativeGravity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>sweet heart, so long’s the way from Hell, so long. — León joins the AX. canon-compliant with all three continuities.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Leon Garcia de Asturias &amp; Caterina Sforza</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>ex averno</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They lead him up from the earth, his chains clanging like bells in the deep silence.</p><p> </p><p>It’s steeper than he remembers, the slope. It invites mythic insinuations.</p><p> </p><p>He thinks of the Old World, the one of the First Testament, its stories so like songs — thinks of the dead bride, the snake strange and warm, still curled around her cooling ankle. The parody of nuptial kiss, his hard fangs and her soft flesh, the quiet sound with which it yielded. The bruise where a capillary burst, its bloom on her small foot a kind of inverse amber, preserving the short cry that must’ve left her lips.</p><p> </p><p>He’d gone below, her husband. Walked the arduous miles with nothing but his voice to cast about as lamp against the darkness, and sought her return from the Maiden, that unforgiving queen Death had set over the resting and the damned. He’d almost passed her trials.</p><p> </p><p>But then, he was a poet, and poets are faithless. He couldn’t help the backward glance any more than he could help his human hungers.</p><p> </p><p>(This, perhaps, because another poet wrote the song, and poets know it’s easier to think yourself in love with what is lost, to strip it clean of blood and worship at a false altar.</p><p> </p><p>León himself knows more about that than he’d like to.)</p><p> </p><p>He looks between his jailers. Or, rather, he looks between the places where he <em>approximates</em> his jailers; it’s hard to tell shape from shape, still so low in the earth’s bowels. His lips twist, a mirthless grimace.</p><p> </p><p>He remembers the other song, too. The one about the husband.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>§</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She’s wearing a novice’s vestments, starched cotton in the colour of crushed cobalt, a blue so deep and true it’s as if she’s wrapped around herself the skies of August. He wonders how high the white of her boots climbs after it disappears under the fabric. Wonders how quickly she could gore him with the sharp point of her heel if he asked about it.</p><p> </p><p>His mouth curls, easy, and for a moment they are only man and woman, eye and what is beautiful to the eye, beholder and beholden.</p><p> </p><p>Not too quickly, he hedges.</p><p> </p><p>(Hopes, rather.)</p><p> </p><p>“Cardinal,” he greets, and he is again aware of himself, standing half-beast in the chiaroscuro of the threshold, somewhere between Samson and a shackled Lazarus.</p><p> </p><p>She appraises him for what feels like a very long time. He keeps himself still, thinking of another song, the one with the young wife, bribing Hell’s dogs with honeycake for safe passage. How she must’ve willed her hands not to shake. How they must’ve shook, regardless. <em>Maybe this is what Mariam felt in </em><em>the</em><em> kitchen, standing there with the angel.</em></p><p> </p><p>Then again, maybe it’s what her Son felt, standing much later with his brother under a porphyry of olives.</p><p> </p><p>“Major,” she returns, eventually. It isn’t hard to see how she’s brought Rome to heel: one could drown in the clear of her eyes, and be very glad of it indeed. She tilts her head to the side, then, and the petulance of it betrays it hasn’t been so long since she’s toppled over the cusp of adolescence. “How would you like to be a freer man?”</p><p> </p><p>His grin splits wider at her choice of words. “I think I like that you won’t lie to me,” he says, meaning, <em>I like that you aren’t t</em><em>rying to seduce me with</em><em> redemption.</em></p><p> </p><p>And really, it’s so easy, going from being a chained lion to being another one of her dogs. It’s like falling asleep, or falling into death.</p><p> </p><p>Like turning around.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>§</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Years later, they’re in her office with Kate and Wordsworth, and something the professor says makes him remember those stray thoughts he’d had when she’d ordered him marched up from the catacombs at Regina.</p><p> </p><p>In a bout of madness, he asks her if she’s every played the lyre.</p><p> </p><p>“No,” Caterina says, and doesn’t quite know what to make of the relief that sags his features.</p><p> </p><p>He thinks of telling her, and then thinks better.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p>.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <em> <strong>fin.</strong> </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><b>general notes:</b> the Old Testament is referred to as the “First Testament” because I imagine they must’ve gained a whole slew of saints in the almost-millennium since Armageddon, and this usually comes with additions to the numbers of the Holy Books. (my basis for this theory is Lilith’s status as Naia Sancta, her presence on the basilica’s walls, and her mausoleum.) the line about beholding is paraphrased (and mirrored in context, really) from a poem of Rilke’s. Regina is a reference to the real-life Regina Coeli prison. the summary of this fic is a paraphrase of the last line in Willa Cather’s <i>Eurydice</i>, as it seemed only fitting.</p><p><b>other notes:</b> I’ve been perusing the various incarnations of this series again, and I am going to give my twelve-year-old self <i>everything she wants</i>. as León has always been one of my darlings, I figured I should start with him. :]</p><p>if you have made it this far: thank you! I do hope you’ve enjoyed it. ^^</p></blockquote></div></div>
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